With Torment out of the way, it looks like development on Bard's Tale IV may be shifting into higher gear. inXile have published a brief new Kickstarter update for it, the second this month. The main takeaway from the update is that the game's release has been officially postponed to next year.

inXile president Matt Findley here. Many of you have reached out to ask, so we want to take this opportunity to confirm that The Bard's Tale IV will be releasing in 2018. Thanks, too, to our work on The Mage's Tale, we have increased the visual scope of the game in ways that we could not have with just the Kickstarter. With everything now in place, it is simply a matter of taking the time to make the game right, make sure we implement all the stretch goals and backer content, and hit the level of detail we want. The world of Caith is a beautiful one in both sight and sound, and we want our approach to capture that.​

It also announces that inXile's recently hired community manager, Paul Marzagalli, is running a survey to gauge backer preferences.

Hi everyone, Paul here. Thanks to the inXile team for the warm welcome! It has been an outstanding (and fast) first month.

Though this is the “official” announcement of my arrival, I have been out in the community for the past few weeks so I may have already spoken with many of you. Whether in the forums, on our game Facebook pages, or on Twitter @phimseto, please pop by and say hello!

With The Bard’s Tale IV, inXile is bringing back an iconic franchise for old fans and a new generation. In getting to know our backers and the greater inXile community, I put together a survey to help me understand where you are coming from as a RPG fan. This survey isn’t something that I will be sharing publicly, rather it is to help me better identify who our Bard’s Tale IV backers are and what they like in a Bard’s Tale game. This will help us with development not just of The Bard’s Tale IV, but with how we consider and develop future projects! You can find the survey below:

The survey is brief and it is your chance to talk directly to the game devs and let us know what you think. The more of you who participate, the merrier, much like a bard’s sing-a-long! Thank you in advance for your help and thanks to everyone for supporting The Bard’s Tale IV!
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There are a few other administrative and backer reward-related notices in the update, but that's the important stuff. Bard's Tale IV will be at E3 next month, so we can probably expect some new gameplay footage soon.